Lucknow: ‘Implementation women quota bill immediately’

Lucknow : BSP chief Mayawati on Wednesday urged the government to delink the women’s reservation bill from the census and delimitation exercises that would “delay” its implementation for years, and accused the BJP and the Congress of using the bill for political gains. The Bahujan Samaj Party supremo, who has already said that her party will support the bill even if its demands are not met, urged the government to drop certain clauses to ensure that the draft legislation is implemented “immediately.”

She said certain provisions of the bill have been framed in such a manner that the benefit of the reservation would not reach women for the next 15 or 16 years, or “several elections” later. These clauses in the Bill prove that the government is bringing the bill not with an intention to provide reservation for women but to get their votes in the coming election, she said.

The BSP president slammed the Congress saying the party was now advocating quota within quota for the SC/ST and OBC women only for its selfish political gains, having ignored them in the Bill brought by the UPA government led by it.

The Centre on Tuesday introduced a constitutional amendment bill to reserve one-third of seats in the Lok Sabha and state assemblies for women, reviving a bill pending for nearly three decades because of lack of consensus among parties.

“The provisions which need to be mentioned here are that after the passage of the bill a census will be carried out in the country followed by the delimitation for Lok Sabha and state assembly constituencies,” the Bahujan Samaj Party supremo said. “This means it will not be implemented immediately,” she told reporters. It is an open fact that the census takes several years to complete, and the last one was carried out in 2011, Mayawati said.